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Through our very own editors and guest writers, this blog will discuss the INSIDE scoop on the admissions process of various schools and programs. If you wish to ask a specific question, please write to us, and we will make every attempt to address your questions in our future blog discussions.
Monday, April 11, 2016
When Writing About Costco Gets You Into Five Ivies
In an era where many of us get almost all of our information in digital form, marketers understand the importance of sticky click-bait. I won't spend a lot of time lamenting the shrinking of our collective attention-span, because you might not stick around for it.

This week, several news outlets posted articles about an undergraduate applicant, Brittany Stinson, who was accepted to Stanford and five Ivy League colleges. It turns out, her personal statement used her trips to Costco as a child as a metaphor for many of her life lessons. It's a charming, clever essay. But it probably isn't the reason she was accepted to at least half a dozen of the top schools in the country.

We don't know what her grades or test scores were, and statistically-those metrics were probably far more persuasive. The picture of Stinson in front of a Costco warehouse with her pedigreed acceptance packages is eye-catching, and perhaps an untapped marketing opportunity for Costco.

But it is the advice from an admissions officer, which Stinson is quoted as sharing, that really gets to buy gador alprazolam the heart of things. "[I]f your essay is on the ground and there is no name on it and one of your friends picks it up, they should know that you wrote it...". I like this. I won't pretend that this is the magic code for the ideal essay, but it is helpful advice.

It's a good reminder to students that your essay need not be regal. It doesn't even need to be that formal. When getting creative, you don't want to get "too cute". Stinson's success doesn't mean everyone should start writing quippy dispatches about Costco's pretzel samples. At the same time, Stinson wrote about what she knew-not what she thought the admissions committee wanted to see.

If there is any take-away from this fleeting story, it should be that.

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